New Instrument Panel

  We had definitely decided on the Cummins 6BTA 250hp engines for our repower project even before we did the removal of the Perkins, but before I placed the order for the rebuilt engines from SeaMaster Marine in Florida I decided to scan the Craigslist postings of some east coast cities, just to see what was being offered - thinking there might be a good deal on some lightly used engines.  I didn't find engines, but through serendipity found a pair of brand new Cummins instrument panels in Connecticut, complete with wiring harnesses for $200.   The engines from SeaMaster would not come with gauges, although they could supply a set of aftermarket gauges for $550 per engine.  I had also already gotten a quote from Cummins in Seattle for the gauge sets and that came to around $3600 for two panels with harnesses.  So, I went after those gauges from Connecticut right away.  I confessed to the seller that I was on the other side of the country, but would gladly pay shipping costs as well as the fee Paypal charges if he would be willing to sell them to me.  He was willing, and within a couple weeks I had the box of gauge panels and harnesses stored under our piano.  His circumstances were that he had repowered his boat the previous year, and had purchased reman engines directly from Cummins.  The gauges came with his new engines, but he was replacing an older set of Cummins engines so already had similar gauges installed in his boat.  These had ended up stored in his garage and he was cleaning house.  He was pleased to get rid of them, and I was even more pleased to get them.

These panels had all the basics, but I also wanted to have gauges for EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), Boost, and the oil pressure in the transmissions.  I shopped online on the egauges.com website and ordered two sets of VDO gauges that were very similar in appearance to those in the Cummins panel to complete our instrumentation.

The Cummins instrument panels just happened to be the same dimension as a standard sheet of paper - 8.5" x 11".  I printed two copies of the photograph of the panel, cropped and borderless to fill the sheet.  I could use those for designing our new instrument panel.  There was enough room to put the extra gauges either above or below the panels, with a spot for the rudder angle indicator as well.

  The existing instrument panel with the Perkins gauges was on a piano hinge so it could be easily opened for access to the back.  We removed the entire panel, set aside the Perkins gauges and I then used the empty panel to make a mock up of a new panel.  I covered the old cut outs with paper and cut out shapes for the additional gauges from cardboard so I could move them around.  Here's the result.  The square in the top center is for the rudder angle gauge.

This would become the model for Ray to use to make a new instrument panel.  I initially purchased some mahogany lumber for this purpose, but then remembered I had some mahogany cabinet doors stored in the garage.  I had removed them from the dining room insets shortly after buying our house back in 1972.  They had been waiting patiently under the workbench in the garage for nearly 40 years to fulfill this purpose.  Ray worked his wizardry with the cabinet door until it looked like this.  The cutouts for the panels were recessed so they would mount flush with the wood.

At this point I brought the new panel home and stained it to match the boat, using Interlux #42 Brown Mahogany.  I followed that with about 10 coats of varnish.

While this was going on Ray worked on the rudder angle indicator gauge.  Its face was clouded over and it was pretty sorry looking.  It was made by Raritan, and with a little investigation I found that a new lens could not be ordered for it - I could buy just a new gauge for around $186, or gauge and sender combined for over $400.  Yikes!  I suggested to Ray that perhaps the face could be replaced with a piece of thin plastic cut from a CD case and he took it from there.  Next thing I knew he had a jig set up to contour the new faceplate onto the gauge.

It took a couple of tries, but those CD cases don't require a lot of capital investment.  He also put a fresh dab of red paint on the needle to make it easier to see.

There was one extra gauge space in the Cummins panels, and I planned on putting the extra oil pressure gauges for the transmissions there.  Those extra spaces were filled with false bezels, and I assumed the round raised VDO emblems were separate knock-outs that could easily be removed to place a gauge there.  Nope - it was one solid piece, with posts coming out the backside for some metal clips to hold it in place.  They weren't at all designed to take an extra gauge.  Ray fit the proverbial square peg into the round hole by creating a mount to enable him to use his lathe to carve out perfectly round holes of just the right diameter for our pressure gauges.  Everything came together to make our nice looking instrument panel seen here.

This is fairly complete, although we'll probably add a hole for the horn button.

We turned the keys and pressed

the buttons, but nothing happened since there were no engines in the boat yet.